


The Terror

by whosKieren (EyeofOrion)



Series: Canon/meta Siren [2]
Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: M/M, mentions of canon death and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:43:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3718978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyeofOrion/pseuds/whosKieren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kieren has seen too much and it is not over yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Terror

Head / heart.

They repeat in Kieren’s head still, the images of what he’s seen. He can close his eyes, eyes like pinhole cameras, but they don’t stop.

Staring down Pearl’s gun, staring down Jem’s gun, staring down _Rick’s_ gun, staring down Gary, staring down Bill.

Watching, motionless and passive as if he’d been painted chalk-white on the wall, as Bill executed Maggie Burton. Sudden crack splitting the air, a straight-line hole through her head. Head. Dead.

Finding Rick’s body, hastily propped under six-foot letters that really were painted on the garage door. Knife buried hilt-deep in his brain, robbing him of the second chance that wasn’t even half of what Rick deserved. Head. Dead.

Every one of those guns – how many was it, now? – that the people he should have trusted, or who claimed to trust him, held with shaking hands with the round black muzzle towards his face. One twitch of those already twitching fingers and that bullet would have lodged itself, _crack_ , in his eye or his mouth or his forehead; small hole like a black circle painted on a whitewashed wall. Head. Dead.

Same _crack_ ; different ending. No hole through an innocent’s head, no spray of black-that-should-be-red, no dead eyes glazing even deader. Different weight crashing down on his chest. The weight comes from the outside this time. His eyes open and there’s sky above him and _this isn’t how it ends_. And the weight on him is real and the first sound he hears after the _crack_ is not mourning; it’s more like someone rejoicing. Not dead. And he will be helped upright and then later he will be shown the marks, the same small black-paint bullet hole. He’ll trace it like the doubting always trace scars. Heart. Alive.

The cloying, crashing memories don’t leave him. One _alive_ does not balance all the _dead_ that he cannot erase, cannot change, cannot forgive. It does not solve. But he is alive, because a man whose heart is cold and rent inside his chest wanted _needed_ him to be. Heart. Alive.

So it hurts, and the memories return and _repeat_ and _repeat_ and _repeat_ when he finds out. There was another knife ready to be plunged into _his_ skull and another three-letter initialism ready to be used to justify _his_ death. The same God in three parts used to plead forgiveness, and therefore innocence, and therefore righteousness, amen. And it was _hideous_ , the parallels bringing him back sickeningly to the event that nearly did a second time what it had the first. Head. Dead.

He runs, and there’s nowhere to run to. There’s no friend to turn to and hold him and remind him the weight is there because it means something and he is not one of those who do not know that. His fingers curl and itch and reach for a hand that is not there anymore. The freshest remembered images bombard him and he convulses. _Scissors_ , brutal, red-that-should-be-black, red like paint splashed by a child spoiling a postcard picture, too much, far too much. Heart. Dead.

He is not safe. He is not safe. He is not safe _I am not safe_.

His hands grip his arms just above his elbows, as if he’s holding himself together. Laughable; he’s not. The door slams behind him _crack_ and he does not make it to the bed he’s on the floor, back against the cold hard black metal of his bed. One of his hands twists yellow comforter into a fist that is all angles and the air shifts fitfully IN _OUT_ IN _OUT_ _I am not safe I am not safe_. He does not know how long he is there before there are small firm hands gentle on his arms because Jem has realised this time she cannot keep her distance. Her words fumble but for once, her hands do not, and it takes her a long time and Kieren’s eyes are wild and they terrify her but she tells him. _You are safe_ he is safe. By the time he is seeing the world in real colours again there is a vein in her neck standing out but she tries, she tries so hard, _I’m so sorry_ , she tries so hard to keep herself calm for him. _Let’s get you some help_ he said and it’s only right that she returns the favour. She holds his cold hand in her warm ones, blood rushing too fast too fast. Heart. Alive.

He will go back to Simon. Simon will explain and he will understand, eventually, maybe. Maybe, one day, one day he will feel safe. He will think about that small round hole he traced with his cold fingertip and the long scar next to it, a great rift like the dry land between a parted ocean, a rift of too-black through too-white where there is no blood. There should be blood. The scars that doubting sinners trace are forged with blood, maybe. And the truest followers betray the ones they love once twice three times. But he did not use the knife and he did take the shot. Kieren’s head is whole and Simon’s heart is not and perhaps that counts for something. Heart. Alive.

There are no answers. There is no right and wrong, and if there were they would not be painted in black and white, and red.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from “[The Terror](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LXlRiZP6bw)” - The Flaming Lips


End file.
